Month: February 2010

This is so unbelievable it’s surreal. It’s so crazy that even people like Phil Platt were in denial. As of two days ago, when people started saying NASA was being raped, he had this to offer:

OK, yes, it does look like (assuming the rumors are true) the Obama budget for NASA is cutting out the Constellation rocket program in general and Ares in particular. But that doesn’t mean manned spaceflight is dead.

As I said in that above link, private space companies are still a ways off from putting people in orbit. However, I strongly suspect they’ll be doing it before Ares would’ve been ready to do it anyway. Private companies like Space X may be two years from that, while Ares wouldn’t have been ready for five, assuming NASA could even get Ares ready by the scheduled time and in the assigned budget (which I would give a chance of, oh, say, precisely 0). So it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that after the Shuttle retires later this year (or early next) companies like Space X will be able to reach the International Space Station with rockets before NASA could.

Clue here Phil, private companies are two years away from REACHING ORBIT. We’re not talking heavy lifters here, we’re talking cruises taking up to six people into space for fifteen freaking minutes. You remember when NASA was at that point? Yeah, 1962. Well, ignore the damned rumors, here it is in black and white:

Yeah, I know that’s kinda small. In particular, I think all a person really needs to read is:

In place of Constellation, the President’s Budget funds a redesigned and reinvigorated program that focuses on leveraging advanced technology, international partnerships, and commercial capabilities to set the stage for a revitalized human space flight program for the 21st Century. The President’s Budget will also increase NASA’s funding, accelerating work — constrained for years due to the budget demands of Constellation — on climate science, green aviation, science education, and other priorities.

Now, people like Phil Platt think it’s kinda good that NASA’s budget’s being increased. And he thinks it’s kinda good that we focus on the private sector. The question I have, is, given he’s an astronomer, what’s he going to think when Hubble or Chandra blows a fifty cent fuse and shuts down? We’re not going to have a bus to take spare parts up there any more.

Exactly how is Space-X, which has never even reached orbit, going to grab onto that thing, stop it, fix it, and place it back in orbit?

Clue here, it ain’t gonna happen in the next decade or two. With Obama spending all of NASA’s resources trying to prove IOCC’s lies aren’t really lies, Hubble will die. Chandra will die. Spitzer will die. Tell me how they won’t? If we’re just going to let our space stuff die, what’s the point in wasting all our money funding astronomers all over the country? It’s rather useless now. Astronomers don’t seem to see a connection to killing off telescopes and astronomy research, I do.

Obama wants to continue the ISS. What for? If we’re not going to travel in space, then why bother learning how to live in space? How are we going to get major modules to the ISS? Sure, rockets will do the trick, but it seems rather wasteful to expand ISS at this point since there’s really no research they can do and extended stays in space now serve no purpose whatsoever. And, it would seem to me that if we had a reliable heavy lifter, men could go into space rather easily.

In the meantime, NASA will get an additional $6 BILLION. Let me clarify that. On top of cutting manned space flight because it was under-funded, as it states in that report, NASA is getting an ADDITIONAL $6 BILLION to do climate research that is already being done by NOAA. That stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those are the people that study, get this, our atmosphere and oceans. In a more generic sense, they study climate change. Call it climate science if you wish. If you want, you can subscribe to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Education. They fund, get this, science education. Particularly, climate science education. Guess they weren’t doing a very good job. Not sure what the point of having two huge federal agencies doing exactly the same thing is. I mean, NOAA can contract a private rocket company exactly the same as NASA. That’s Obama economics for ya. When faced with two agencies doing different things, pay one a lot more than you were paying to have them do exactly the same as the first.

Now, when I was enduring being constantly referred to as a flat-earther a couple of years ago by global warming advocates such as our esteemed astronomer, my concern at the time was that people were taking this hocus pocus way too seriously based on NO supporting evidence. Obama’s actions here are exactly the worst case scenario. Real science is being destroyed by Obama’s pursuit of something the IOCC couldn’t prove because to this day there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that man-made climate change has ever existed. And if it does exist, we’re screwed now for sure. If this planet dies, we’ll have no escape plan now.

Now, in a perfect world, Obama would have taken that $6 billion and put it in the private sector for stuff like electric cars, bullet trains, and immediate things that will affect the Earth’s climate. But, he’s not. By their own admission, a bunch of that money will go to Russia or China to send our stuff into space to a space station we mostly paid for. And, watch a Russian or Chinese launch vs a United States launch. You think they worry about the environment more than we do?

You think I’m pissed?

This is the worst freaking president we’ve ever had.

In one year he screwed Teddy Kennedy by making sure a Republican got his seat. Now he’s screwing John Kennedy by killing his legacy.

Quickie update, March 31, 2016. Six years after this post, NASA STILL can not put a man in space. But, they are quick to tell you, that although there’s a record amount of ice in Antarctica, we should ignore that since it’s been kinda warm in the Arctic.